Posted
by
BeauHDon Monday October 31, 2016 @05:40PM
from the wireless-charging dept.

One of the first big secrets regarding Apple's upcoming smartphone has been spilled. According to a report from Nikkei Asian Review, Foxconn, the firm responsible for assembling iPhones, is testing wireless charging modules for the iPhone 8. TrustedReviews reports: Citing 'an industry source familiar with the matter,' the report states the wireless charging feature could appear on the next Apple handset, but it depends whether the company can produce enough satisfactory units. The source told Nikkei: "Whether the feature can eventually make it into Apple's updated devices will depend on whether Foxconn can boost the yield rate to a satisfactory level later on." The yield rate refers to the 'number of satisfactory units in the production of a batch of components,' and if it's found to be too low, the wireless charging feature could be left out of the iPhone 8 according to the report. It's also claimed the wireless tech could make it into some versions of the iPhone 8 and not others. Nikkei is also reporting that Apple's next gen smartphones are expected to arrive in three different sizes -- 4.7-inch, 5-inch and 5.5-inch -- all of which will come with glass-backed bodies. The Next Web reports: "Nikkei further suggests out of the three new iPhones will be a premium model with a curved edge-to-edge OLED display; the other two models will likely have standard LCD displays. Here's what Nikkei's source said: "Apple has tentatively decided that all the 5.5-inch, 5-inch and 4.7-inch models will have glass backs, departing from metal casings adopted by current iPhones, and Biel and Lens are likely to be providing all the glass backs for the new iPhones next year.

I would have thought the best tech company in the world (tm) would have no problem copying the many successful designs already on the market. Or maybe the yield that they are talking about is interoperability. Can't have a device accidentally get charged by any old generic charging station.

Wireless charging is great. You can have a charger/stand on your desk, one on your nightstand, wherever you want. Just leave it there and your battery is always topped off when you go. You can pick it up and reply to messages without a cable getting caught on things. That was my biggest disappointment with the latest Nexus and Pixel phones, was that Google discontinued that feature. Hopefully if Apple puts it in and Samsung keeps it in their flagships, the next Pixel phones will have it as well.

250ma/500ma from inductive charging is easy. it's when you ramp up to 1Amp where things get dangerous for consumers. you cant have some idiot user throw their keys on the thing and let it start a fire, so I am betting they are working with some NFC tech to make the phone talk to the charging plats so that it only starts charging if an iphone is on it, plus look at the load and turn off charging if some idiot threw teir phone and the keys on it.

Other phones inductively charge at 1A, have done for years. LG and Samsung both sell phones capable of 1A wirelessly, although many chargers only deliver 750mA max. I have an official LG one and a Panasonic one that do 1A.

My guess would be they are working on some kind of alignment system. Google used magnets for the Nexus line, LG and Samsung rely on the shape of the charger and my Panasonic has motors to move the coils.

The QI standard allows for high power charging, it uses a communications mechanism to authorize higher charging currents, so that the risk Lumpy is speaking of just doesn't exist in actual implementations.

Just for comparison the iPhone 6s plus (2750mAh which is the closest to the above), it takes 168 minutes to charge 0-100%. So basically it takes roughly an equal amount of time to wirelessly charge an S6 Edge as it does to charge an iPhone 6s plus using the wired charger.

I'm surprised someone with such a low ID is spouting such nonsense as fact.

Obligatory You Must Be New Here

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched low UID slashdotters post abject troll shit in thoughtful conversations. All those moments will be lost on the internet, like archive.org content from a domain with a regressive robots.txt. Time to die.

250ma/500ma from inductive charging is easy. it's when you ramp up to 1Amp where things get dangerous for consumers. you cant have some idiot user throw their keys on the thing and let it start a fire, so I am betting they are working with some NFC tech to make the phone talk to the charging plats so that it only starts charging if an iphone is on it...

As an added bonus. Apple gets to start a "certified for iPhone charging" program for third-party chargers.

it's when you ramp up to 1Amp where things get dangerous for consumers. you cant have some idiot user throw their keys on the thing and let it start a fire

Unless your keys are somehow magically resonant at the charger's frequency (100 - 200kHz), nothing will happen if you throw them on the charger. If they are resonant, the most that will happen is the keys will warm up a little. Possible even enough to feel.

250ma/500ma from inductive charging is easy. it's when you ramp up to 1Amp where things get dangerous for consumers. you cant have some idiot user throw their keys on the thing and let it start a fire, so I am betting they are working with some NFC tech to make the phone talk to the charging plats so that it only starts charging if an iphone is on it, plus look at the load and turn off charging if some idiot threw teir phone and the keys on it.

Yeah didn't I say exactly that? Copying everyone else's design.

Everyone else's inductive charging is very low amperage

ooooh man are you going to be pissed when you get to 2016 and realise that Donald Trump is a presidential candidate. My only recommendation is stay in 2011 for as long as possible man, other than every wireless charging standard delivering over 1A, 2016 has nothing good to offer.

I would have thought the best tech company in the world (tm) would have no problem copying the many successful designs already on the market. Or maybe the yield that they are talking about is interoperability. Can't have a device accidentally get charged by any old generic charging station.

I dunno. I would prefer to have a plug in charger than a wireless one. Not tor the almost irrelevant earphone jack reason, but because wireless charging is inefficient, and places the second half of the transformer and the power suply inside the phone.

While this isn't the reason for the Samsung catastrophe. That will have an impact on interior space, making for less space for the battery, leading to more shaky schemes to extract more power out of a smaller battery.

I would have thought the best tech company in the world (tm) would have no problem copying the many successful designs already on the market.

Other reporting on the news [macrumors.com] did a better job of providing some insight into why copying may not be possible and why yields may be a problem. Namely, the rumor mill has been indicating since at least January that Apple was going to try to be the first company to bring extended range wireless charging to market (i.e. just need to have the phone within a few feet of a transmitter, rather than in physical contact with a pad).

We've known that they've been working on it for years, so it's just been a question of

I would have thought the best tech company in the world (tm) would have no problem copying the many successful designs already on the market. Or maybe the yield that they are talking about is interoperability. Can't have a device accidentally get charged by any old generic charging station.

Just because it works doesn't mean it works WELL.

I know the Samsung ones plain suck - you have to put it on the charger in a particular spot before it works and every other spot it won't charge. Such finickiness is just n

There's no written or unwritten law that you have to buy every generation. I just bought a 7 - previously had a 5s, and the only reason I did was to have a storage upgrade as well as support for Apple Pay. I have no plans to buy a successor phone - this phone has 128GB, and I don't see it running out.

Every year there's a new iphone. They may stop this cycle eventually, but they don't have a particular reason to. If you are an Apple user, just jump in when the next iphone sounds like it works for you. That really doesn't seem unreasonable. Fun fact: rumors of wireless charging for the 8 predate the 7 launch by months!

And my next car will be a used Kia because why spend $50k to replace a Lexus if you crash it when you can drive a $4k econobox instead?

Poor analogy, as bumpers and many other car parts can be easily replaced (by guys who learned their skills in high schools) for a fraction of the cost of replacing the entire vehicle. And $20k to $30k cars outsell $50k by a wide margin without being shitty "econoboxes" (same for $15k-$25k used cars, which is where the value/quality sweet spot is). A piece of glass in place of a piece of aluminum or stainless steel does not turn a phone into the equivalent of a $50k Lexus, compared to a phone with a plastic

I don't know who the fuck is behind wireless charging and water proofing. It sure as fuck isn't customers.

Wireless charging is fucking stupid because you still need a wire to plug the charging pad in, and the charging pad takes up more space than a simple cable would. And you still need a charging cable and port because the world isn't filled with wireless charging pads. Then you have all the incompatible versions and brands. Then you have the fact that's it's inefficient, slow, and potentially dangerou

Really, you don't think if apple does this that wired port will be gone?

And I say that as a relative Apple fanboy, by Slashdot standards anyway

Spot on. They've already tried to do away with headphone jacks against the wishes of most, because they make phones "bulky," so why would they keep a charging port once the add wireless charging?
Full disclosure: I have never owned an iphone, and will not in the foreseeable future, though I do understand some of the appeal.

It'll be annoying for me if they do get rid of the port. In the morning when I get up I connect my phone to my Mac so that it can charge and sync at the same time. But since they offer the capability to sync wirelessly Apple won't have a problem getting rid of the port. They like making things more complicated to use lately.

I have to respectfully disagree. Yes, you still have to plug something in somewhere (usually usb)... But beyond that it just gets so simple.

I still have to put my phone down -- before I was hunting for a cable, or always had a cable draped over something. Ugly. Now I put the cable away, plug it in (once) and decide where the charging pad is to be. I still have to put my phone down / charge it at night -- now it's easy. I rarely have to go hunting for it either i

My last two phones were in the 2-3 year old range when the micro USB port failed. I jumped on wireless charging for that reason alone. I'd have happily kept one as a throw-around mini-computer if I could still charge it. I'm hopeful that by the time I'm ready to replace this phone I haven't broken it and I can keep it for random dorky uses.

I leave my phone near the bed and use it as an alarm. It sits on a phone stand so that I can read it, so replacing that with a wireless Qi charging base takes up no more space. It's super freaking convenient and works great.

Better yet, I'm not wearing out the USB plug with hundreds of matings.

Wireless charging is fucking stupid because you still need a wire to plug the charging pad in, and the charging pad takes up more space than a simple cable would. And you still need a charging cable and port because the world isn't filled with wireless charging pads. Then you have all the incompatible versions and brands. Then you have the fact that's it's inefficient, slow, and potentially dangerous.

Holy shit there's so much 2011 in that post I felt like I've gone back in time. But to clue you in on what happened in the past 5 years:

- Consumers have liked the idea of wireless charging to the point that there's a lucrative side market for wireless charging accessories.- People realise the benefit of wireless is not that there's no cable but rather that there's no reason to constantly connect and disconnect every time you get to your charging point.- Common household devices now charge your phone like th

You seem awfully angry. You do understand that you don't have to use wireless charging if you don't want to, right? Unless you're an Apple user and they remove the Thunderbolt port, which would be a real dick move that would piss off a lot of people who like to use portable battery packs when they're on the go. If you're concerned about the added cost of a feature you won't use, if you're buying a premium phone the difference is in the noise.

Who am I shilling for? Apple? Samsung? Ikea? Maybe your mythical Consortium of Evil Wireless Charging and Waterproofing Magnates? Or do you not know what the word means and have been using it to sound cool?

You admit that there are different incompatible standards, yet you pretend it's not an issue?

Yep, two, and with charging pads compatible with both at the same time. woes fucking me just how will I live with all that interoperability. Though if Apple do join in an incompatible way then fuck em.

You talk about consumers liking the idea and it being in certain products. More people bought 3D TVs than wireless chargers. How did that turn out?

Physics says it's slower and less efficient than a cable. China says they'll be dangerous when they're popular and people are buying cheapos off Amazon.I don't have to dig around for a cable. It's on my desk, waiting, like a charging pad would be but in a much smaller footprint. I can also hold my device while charging it.

My S7 is IP-whatever rated, does wireless charging, has an easily-accessed SIM and SD slot, a headphone jack, and an exposed micro-USB connector.

It's a real motherfucker to change the battery, though. And I don't know whose cock got sucked by Corning to have them make the back cover out of curved glass because that's about the stupidest idea ever. Then again when my previous S5 died of other causes its battery was still performing about like new, so I'm not too worried about the battery itself shitting th

Waterproofing is for two reasons:1) Have you not noticed how every phone has a moisture detection strip inside? They're the ones denying warranty claims and getting class action lawsuits settled against them ($53M [informationweek.com]) for not covering phones that sustained water damage.

2) Have you ever taken electronics outside on a hot humid day when the electronics are cold from air conditioning? That can condense a LOT of water inside some very sensitive areas.

I started out using Powermat -- had it on everything. Desk chargers, car chargers, garage, bookshelf, other office, etc.. Everywhere. I got tired of [still] waiting for a case / receiver for the iPhone 6s specific. iPhone 7 is out and still no 6s case.

Just got done switching all devices over to the Qi standard. Depending on what Apple does I could see opting out of their charging [if not Qi] option and... wait for a Qi case to show up on the market. Or make it myself.:)

There is an old joke about universities in the south: The college president going around telling the faculty they have to build a school the football team can be proud of. So often things get turned on their head and phones are are going that direction. Perhaps you kids will one day ask you, "in the olden days, did cell phones really have person to person voice communications without an app?"

Wireless charging is great. Just set the phone down on the pad and it charges. No fiddling with a plug and socket.Of course, Apple probably will want to invent their own charging pad so they can charge big bucks for it and stop others from making competing chargers (lots of charge in that sentence). Everyone else has settled on Qi standard. I have these in the car and several spots at home and they work great.

I get the draw of adopting an existing standard, but what if Apple comes up with something better? I'm not saying that they will, and I don't know what it would be if they did, but adopting standards for the sake of adopting standards could have a stagnating effect.

If they do it right, they could support Qi, and do their own thing. That way you can interoperate with all the Qi stuff out there (airports, 3rd party integrations) for a base functionality, and then do your "Magic Charger (tm)" that has some e

How about the iPhone S 8 Edge v2 Turbo Pure Edition with Siri2? That has a nice ring to it.
And I don't know how crabapple haven't increased the screen to body ratio on devices that are so universally lauded for their designs. Their phones are still way bigger than they need to be, and ports aren't the problem. You only need to go so thin, but wasted space around the screen should be minimized.

It is a lot more shattery though. Glass is reasonably strong when you compress it, but lacks tensile strength.

With a layer of glass and plastic or metal, when bending the plastic or metal stretches or compresses while the glass just bends.With two layers of glass, one layer is compressed and the other stretched. It won't flex nearly as much, but it will break with less flexing.

not even a charging port. You can buy a giant charging pad and keep it in your pocket when you're on the go. It'll even double as an ass warmer if you're by an outlet but you're phone's already topped off.